In the previous post, I introduced a number of important themes connected with Scotus’s view of a moral act and commented on passages in which he employs musical imagery and terminology to explicate his view. In this post, I want to discuss one additional passage where Scotus once again draws upon musical metaphors and concepts to unpack various aspects of his moral theory. Having highlighted Scotus’s use of the term “consonance,” I then develop his image further, bringing his dynamic view of natural law, as well as his emphasis on the beauty of moral acts and the creativity and practical skill of the moral agent into conversation with my own thoughts on the interplay of contingency and stability and our role as co-composers in an ongoing improvisatory symphony which is this world.

In Ordinatio III.37.25-28, Scotus uses the term consonare (“to be consonant”) four times to explain the relationship between natural law in the extended sense and natural law in the strict sense. For example, the Subtle Doctor states, although the precepts of second table of the Law, that is, natural law in the extended sense, “do not follow necessarily” from the precepts of the first table of the Law, that is, natural law in the strict sense, nonetheless, the former are “highly consonant (multum consona)” with “those first practical principles that are known in virtue of their terms and necessarily known to any intellect [that understands their terms].”[1] Building on Scotus’s metaphor, perhaps we might think of natural law in the strict sense as an unchanging melody given by God in order to reveal himself—his love, beauty, goodness and so forth—to his creatures. This divine melody is a theme that reverberates throughout the created order and sounds most strongly in the human heart. Natural law in the extended sense is the harmonic background supporting the divine melody and drawing attention to its beauty. One could imagine a different harmonic background upon which the melody might be played—one could conceive, for example, an alternative consonant or even an extremely dissonant harmonic background. However, just as with a masterpiece like Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, whose main theme is so distinctive and pronounced yet is so intimately tied to the harmonies, rhythms, and unfolding compositional “story,” if Beethoven were to completely reharmonize the piece, changing the time signature and main tonal center, we would hear the piece as a different, new composition.

Similarly, God as divine master-composer could have, as Scotus might put it, according to his divine power (de potentia absoluta), presented us with a different set of natural laws in the extended sense and with different divine positive laws; yet, he has chosen in his wisdom and creativity, according to his ordained power (de potentia ordinata), to give us the second table of the Law as we have it.[2] That he also chooses to dispense with or reharmonize certain aspects or selected precepts of these laws at different times and with respect to different individuals is his prerogative qua master-composer. Such free activity in no way impugns his character since neither natural law in the extended sense nor divine positive law (for example, circumcision in the Old Testament or certain dietary laws) entails the necessity of natural law in the strict sense.

Developing our musical analogy further and bringing in the two power theme just mentioned, once you are given a specific musical framework, structured according to a particular set of theoretical principles—analogous to the world into which we have been thrown and the natural laws given in the Decalogue—a certain regularity or order is established. As a result, those who live and work within this context must learn to work creatively with rather than against the given structures and principles. Refusal to do so not only alienates the musician from the artistic tradition, but it also hinders his or her own development as a musician and, in effect, silences his or her work, rendering it either obscure or unintelligible. If musicians here represent humans who must live and move and have their being within God’s world and live according to his laws, then one can draw the comparisons relatively easily: human being is lived best when humans live harmoniously with God’s laws—laws which are crafted to enhance, rather than impede their freedom and creativity.

In addition, once a musical framework has been given and established, those working in it are socialized by it. That is, although the musical scales, theoretical rules, harmonic progressions, and so forth could have been otherwise, that they not, creates a “feel” of permanence and attaches a sense of stability to present framework. In other words, this particular framework becomes the framework. Consequently, since the musicians occupy the same framework, shared understandings of consonance and dissonance will develop naturally. Such shared perceptions also materialize due to commonalities in the very being of the musicians themselves (for example, refined auditory skills), making them well-suited for creative work within this context. Analogously, humans created by God are well-suited for the world in which he has placed them—a world in which they are summoned as co-composers to beautify and better themselves, others, and the world itself. Given our historical and temporal existence, the shared understandings of consonance and dissonance form a continuum of greater and lesser degrees, allowing for many variations on the given themes and much “movement” within the structures. In other words, there is a dynamism built into the framework itself permitting and even beckoning artists to improvise the “original” themes so that they might be heard anew through the passage of time.

Here I want to return to our Beethoven example and engage in a thought experiment. What if Beethoven crafted his masterpiece in such a way that in order for the main theme to sound most beautifully, select themes introduced in the opening movements were meant to be developed, placed within new extended harmonies and set over syncopated poly-rhythms unconceivable to those hearing only the earlier movements? Instead of a static one-time composition, what if Beethoven’s symphony was intended as a multi-authored work, inviting multiple co-composers to co-create a dynamic, ongoing piece? The structure of the piece—its “narrative” or form—as well as its central melodic themes are givens; they remain constant and are the framework within which the performers as co-composers must choose to operate. Nonetheless, within the various movements or epochal periods, the themes may be reharmonized, ornamented, and improvised upon in myriad ways. The main themes and “storyline” must remain identifiable, but the structure itself both fosters and invites (by design) co-composers of various intellectual levels, practical skills, and moral character to contribute to the beauty of the whole. If we can imagine such a state of affairs, then perhaps we can apply the analogy to God’s free creation of the world and his invitation to humans to participate in his, as it were, on-going redemptive historical improvisational symphony, whose last movement continues to be written.

Although I have highlighted the dynamism built into the structures and framework of an artistic composition, I want to emphasize again that choosing to work with the givens is not to forfeit one’s freedom or one’s creativity. The expert musician is well aware of this fact, as she is one who has chosen to devote herself to the study of the masters, the principles of music theory, and the customary practices of the art, both submitting to and innovatively expanding the tradition.

Lastly—and hopefully the Scotistic echoes of this section will be heard—as a freely created structure, the framework itself could have been otherwise; however, the fact that it is not means that a certain level of stability and regularity characterize the present framework (analogous, of course, to the present world). If we acknowledge these givens and work creatively with them as co-composers in an ongoing improvisatory symphony, we do well. Yet, as free beings, we can choose to reject this framework along with its principles and the authority of the person or persons “behind” the givens. To do so is certainly possible, but it is not without consequences for oneself, for others, and for the piece itself.

[2] For Scotus’s discussion of God’s absolute and ordained power, see Ord. I, d. 44 (ed. Vat. VI 633–69); Wolter, Will and Morality, 191–94. God’s ordained power speaks of his self-imposed limitations to act in accord with laws he himself has freely willed to be the case. God’s absolute power speaks of his ability to non-contradictorily and justly alter, revoke, reconfigure, or transcend such ordained laws. As Scotus explains, to the extent that God “is able to act in accord with those right laws he set up previously, is said to act according to his ordained power; but insofar as he is able to do many things that are not in accord with, but go beyond, these preestablished laws, God is said to act according to his absolute power. For God can do anything that is not self-contradictory or act in any way that does not include a contradiction (and there are many such ways he could act); and then he is said to be acting according to his absolute power” (Wolter, Will and Morality, 192). See also, Courtenay, “The Dialectic of Omnipotence.” Courtenay observes that the two power distinction was based on the “fundamental perception […] that what God created or established did not exhaust divine capacity or the potentialities open to God” (ibid., 243).

Scotus recognized that an existential application of natural law, and particularly natural law in the extended sense, requires the proper exercise of practical reason. On the one hand, “Scotus insists upon the primacy of God’s will for an objective moral order”; on the other hand, Scotus emphasizes “the centrality of the human will in self-determination.”[1] In our lived experience, moral goodness becomes manifest in the creative interplay between these two wills. This is not to say that humans via their volitional choices and actions “define goodness,” as that is the prerogative of the divine will, which the Subtle Doctor emphatically claims is the objective standard for moral goodness.[2] Elsewhere Scotus describes in detail two affections intrinsic to the human will, the affection for justice and the affection for advantage. The former moderates the latter and makes possible freedom from or freedom beyond natural appetite. However, as Ingham brings to our attention, a Scotistic view of ethics involves much more than an explanation of the inner workings of the two affections. Scotus’s analysis of moral goodness stresses “the relationship of goodness to beauty. It presents the moral act as a work of art and the moral agent as an artisan.”[3]

The use of an artistic model and artistic analogies to explicate moral theories is not foreign to the Western philosophical tradition. Aristotle, for example, employs musical analogies (as well as medical analogies) in his Nicomachean Ethics.[4]Thomas Aquinas references both types of Aristotlean analogy; however, his preference is to cite and develop the Philosopher’s medical images.[5] Scotus, in contrast, turns frequently to artistic and musical analogies and terminology in his reflections on ethics and the moral goodness of an act. In light of the Subtle Doctor’s preference for freedom over natural necessity,”[6] his choice of artistic, creative freedom as his preferred explanatory model is, as he might put it, fitting.

Given my current research, I want to engage in a slight digression that brings Foucault into the conversation. In what I have called elsewhere, Foucault’s “ethico-aesthetic turn,” he too describes ethical acts and ascetical practices as akin to works of art in which the agent, through self-disciplinary technologies acquires practical skills and a certain degree of self-mastery, enabling him or her to live a beautiful life—a life which itself is an ethopoietic work of art.[7] Like Scotus, Foucault values freedom and stresses repeatedly the contingent character of our world. Foucault’s discussion of creative self-elaboration, subject-formation, and his notion of power relations presuppose free subjects with rational capacities. However, unlike Scotus Foucault offers no explanation as to why humans are able to engage in such self-directed, uncompelled activities so that they might define themselves and pursue an authentic, beautiful life. Moreover, Foucault’s reticence to address directly the metaphysics of human being or what makes a human person a person worthy of dignity and respect is a weakness in his account not unrelated to his reticence to affirm at least some transhistorical, transcultural ethical norms. If there is nothing at all stable or unchanging about the ontology of human beings, then there is nothing upon which one might base a doctrine of universal human rights.[8] That is, rights will remain—and this seems to be the case for Foucault—epistemai-specific or tied to a particular cultural and historical period, not only socially constructed “all the way down” but in no way grounded in a universal, shared human nature or universal, essential capacities or features constituting the human person as such.

Returning to Scotus’s use of artistic and musical images to explicate ethical themes, Ingham observes how the Subtle Doctor’s strategy of bracketing reference to complete human fulfillment in God in the hereafter—that is, eschatological perfection—allows him, while not denying that our ultimate union with God is our telic destiny and happiness, to concentrate his attention on the concrete act in all its particularity as morally beautiful. The morally good act appears not as a means to a pre-determined end, but as an artistic whole within which harmony and proportion among several elements exist.”[9] By foregrounding the concrete act and the circumstantial aspects and context in which it must be considered for a proper assessment of the act’s moral value, Scotus opens the door for dialogue about ethics across religious and non-religious boundaries. None of this is meant to downplay Scotus’s theology and its role as a source and influence for his philosophy. It goes without saying that Scotus’s theological commitments make him, like Augustine, skeptical about philosophy’s ability to deliver one to a life of complete human flourishing.[10] For the Subtle Doctor and the North African Saint, the human heart finds its ultimate repose and contentment in loving union with the Triune God. Nonetheless, because Scotus “rejects any natural or necessary connection between knowledge of an objective moral goal such as [Aristotle’s] eudaimonia [or beautific vision] and the human ability to attain it in this life (pro statu isto), he can without compromising his own theological beliefs, bracket talk of those aspects requiring a commitment to divine revelation, and discuss a theory of moral acts which, presumably, someone like Foucault or Fanon would find worthy of a hearing and perhaps even find appealing.

In Ordinatio I.17, Scotus describes the moral goodness of an act as a kind of comeliness, elegance, or ornamentation (quasi quidam decor) analogous to an indefinable yet perceptible embellishment beautifying a work of art. Describing the décor of a morally good act, Scotus writes:

it can be said that just as beauty is not some absolute quality in a beautiful body, but is the sum of all that is in harmony [convenientium] with such a body (for example, size, magnitude, figure and color), and also the sum of all its aspects [omnium respectuum] (which are those of the body and those of one another), so the goodness of a moral act is a kind of décor of that act, including the sum of due proportion to all to which it has proportion (for example to the power, to the object, to the end, to the time, to the place and to the manner), and this especially as those things which right reason says must harmonize [debere convenire] with the act: so that regarding all these things we can say that harmony [convenientia] of the act with right reason is that by which the act has been considered [posita] good, and that by which it has been considered [posita]—in whatever manner it might harmonize [conveniat] with other aspects—not good, since whatever act, if it is not in accord with right reason when performed [in operante] (for example, if it does not exhibit [habeat] right reason when performing it [in operando]), then the act is not good.[11]

In this passage, Scotus employs the term convenire or some version of its noun variant convenientia four times. I have chosen to translate convenire as “to harmonize” and convenientia as “harmony,” in keeping with Scotus’s preference for musical analogies. Here the idea seems to be that the morally good act, similar to a beautiful work of art, will exhibit just the right balance among its various aspects. Thus, the morally good act will be performed in the right manner, at the right time, in the right location and circumstances, among the appropriate people, with the proper end in view, and so forth. For example, telling the truth, while typically a good act, can be told in an inappropriate manner, to an inappropriate conversation partner, and with an end in view which actually intends to harm an individual.

Scotus’s emphasis on the circumstances and context of the act, of course, sounds with Aristotelian echoes, as the Philosopher makes comparable statements in the Nicomachean Ethics.[12] In both Aristotle and Scotus’s account of morally good or virtuous acts, practical reason plays a prominent role. As the passage from Ordinatio I.17 demonstrates, Scotus lays stress upon right reason’s ability to perceive a fitting or harmonious combination of the various elements surrounding the act in question. If the act and its, as it were, harmonic background do not form a consonant whole—a consonance determined by the agent’s prudential reason, itself an intellectual virtue developed within a tradition as a musical skill is developed within a tradition—, then the act is not considered morally good.

In addition to his emphasis on the circumstantial context of an act, Scotus also underscores the objective dimension of the action. As Ingham explains, by the term “objective,” Scotus has in view the “object of the action. For example, in the directive ‘tell the truth,’ truth is the object of the action. ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’ is an objectively good act because persons (both you and your neighbor) are worthy of love.”[13] Although Scotus claims that every moral act has an objective dimension discernable by right reason, the moral beauty of an act is not reducible to this dimension. The agent’s freedom in choosing a particular act also factors into Scotus’s account. For example, one might tell the truth about a particular person’s illegal financial activities—not because it is the right thing to do given the deleterious consequences such activity has brought on others, but because one’s boss has demanded that the truth be told. There is a sense in which the act is objectively good because truth was the object of the action; however, the person uttering the truth is not brought into a better moral condition as a result of the action; his or her character is not made better. In contrast, when a person chooses freely to live a life of truth-telling and has not only one’s own good but the good of others’ in view, his or her actions “take on a free and rational quality which enhances their natural objective goodness.”[14] When this is the case, one’s truth telling is not only a morally good act (objectively speaking), but it is also an act that makes one a better person.[15]

Moral objects, or the objective dimension of an act, as we have seen are not, for Scotus, the final word, ending all moral discussion. Given what humans are—free, rational beings, Scotus argues that goodness and truth are fundamental moral objects well-suited to our nature and thus proper human goods, aimed at our fulfillment and perfection.[16] Because we are beings with rational powers, we seek reasonable, coherent explanations for our own actions, the actions of others, and for events occurring in our world. Likewise, because we are beings with volitional powers, we desire what is good, even if we are often mistaken as to what is in fact good for us. In short, whether real or apparent, truth and goodness “are significant moral objects; they are human goods. Indeed, truth and goodness are the two most fundamental moral objects; they respond to our human aspirations which express themselves in activities of knowing and loving.”[17]

Of course, Scotus differentiates between morally good acts and morally neutral or indifferent acts. For example, curling my hair in the morning, or tying my right shoe before my left shoe are morally neutral acts. Although both acts are chosen and performed freely, neither are morally significant, as the objects of the action—curly hair or tied shoes from right to left—are morally insignificant and do not augment or diminish my moral character.

In sum, for Scotus, a morally good act is multi-faceted, involving conscious intent, proper motive, a harmonious circumstantial context such as the proper manner, end, time, place, and so forth, and it is an act that perfects or improves the agent’s character. A morally good act, as Ingham states, “resembles not simply a whole, but a beautiful whole thanks to the developed ability of the moral expert in identifying significant data in light of principles, objects and circumstances.”[18] The moral expert not only acts “out of the appropriate moral motivation,” but she also “has a developed eye for beauty and seeks to create beauty in each act and moral judgment.”[19]

[3] Ibid. See also, Kovach, “Divine and Human Beauty in Duns Scotus’ Philosophy and Theology.” Kovach makes a case for Scotus’s bringing back the so-called lost transcendental, beauty. According to Kovach, Scotus argues for the real identity of beauty and goodness, claiming only a formal distinction obtains between the two. Thus, beauty and goodness are coextensive with being and the other simple transcendentals.

[5] In footnote 18 Ingham states that “the Index Thomisticus reveals a ratio of health to art images at about three to one.” Since “Aristotle himself favors the medical imagery,” Thomas’s own appropriation of the Stagirite’s medical analogies is not surprising (The Harmony of Goodness, 56).

[7] See Foucault’s discussion of writing as an aspect of ancient “self-training” involving an “an ethopoietic function: it is an agent of the transformation of truth into ēthos” (Foucault, “Self-Writing,” in Ethics, Subjectivity, and Truth, 209).

[8] I shall pick up the discussion of universal human rights shortly, explicating Scotus’s contribution to the topic and reconnecting our previous dialogue partners’ views on rights talk; here I simply mention the theme in passing.

[16] See, for example, Scotus’s discussion in Quodlibetal Question 18.8-14; Wolter, God and Creatures, 400–403. In Quod. Quest. 18.13-14, Scotus draws an analogy between food as an appropriate object to nourish humans and knowledge (and by implication truth) as an appropriate object for the intellect (Wolter, God and Creatures, 402–403). Earlier in Quod. Quest. 18.9, Scotus had distinguished between primary and secondary types of goodness and suitability. That which perfects the being or entity itself is good and suitable in the primary sense. For example, truth is a primary human good, given what we are: rational animals. Having proportional facial features is a good in the secondary sense (Ibid., 400–401).

In epistle 10*, addressed to Alipius, the bishop of Thagaste, Augustine brings to Alipius’s attention his concerns regarding the activities of slave dealers in his region. As Augustine explains, these “businessmen” are “draining Africa of much of its human population and transferring their ‘merchandise’ to the provinces across the sea.”[1] These traders and their hired thugs preyed upon the poorest of Roman citizens, kidnapping them and then selling them as slaves.[2] As he emphasizes throughout the letter, the situation at Hippo Regius had become increasingly violent. With the most vulnerable terrorized, and receiving little or no protection from Roman officials, they turned to the church for help.

In the midst of this violence, Augustine and his church intervened. Not only did Augustine investigate Roman law in order to find potential loopholes to help put an end to this criminal activity,[3] but he and his church actually physically rescued captives from slave ships and hid them away—actions which put their own lives at risk. Augustine recounts to Bishop Alipius one such rescue mission, in which over one hundred individuals captured by Galatian merchants were rescued by parishioners from Augustine’s church.[4]

There was not lacking a faithful Christian who, knowing our custom in missions of mercy of this kind, made this known to the church. Immediately, partially from the ship in which they had already been loaded, partially from the spot where they had been hidden prior to boarding, about 120 people were freed by our people […] Your Holy Prudence can imagine how much similar trafficking in unfortunate souls goes on in other coastal areas, if at Hippo Regius, where in God’s mercy, the great vigilance of the church is on the watch so that poor people can be freed from captivity of this sort and these people who carry on such a trade, though far from suffering from the severity of this law, are nevertheless punished, at least by the loss of the money they originally spent, so great is the greed of these people.[5]

Even though prior to the discovery of Divjak epistle 10* scholars such as Claude Lepelley and Peter Brown have argued, drawing heavily on Augustine’s homilies and Scripture commentaries, that Augustine evinced extraordinary concern for the downtrodden and destitute,[6] the Divjak letters provide additional strength to such claims and reveal the degree to which Augustine and his congregation were actively involved in socio-political projects on behalf of the poor, oppressed, and exploited. In addition, Divjak letter 10* reveals Augustine’s concern for political or citizen freedom—even though incomplete and in need of revision. This suggests that Augustine was not unaware of the connection between political freedom and metaphysical freedom—a connection commonplace in Franciscan tradition.[7] (In future posts, I hope to revisit, in particular, John Duns Scotus’s views on freedom and slavery).

[2] For additional study of the social setting of Augustine’s day, see Lepelley, “Facing Wealth and Poverty.” Lepelley discussion how the status of the coloni had become de facto (though not de jure) “a kind of serfdom” (ibid., 6). See also, Brown, “Augustine and a Crisis of Wealth.” Brown argues against two common misconceptions of modern historians regarding the socio-political and economic constitution of the Catholic church of Augustine’s day. First, Brown contends that the Catholic church at that time “was not a rich church, nor was it necessarily a church exclusively of the rich. It was not until the early sixth century that any church in the Latin West came to hold properties which equaled in their extent and income the estates of the great secular landowners. Up to then, the Catholic church had remained overshadowed by the truly wealthy—and the church of Africa seems to have been no exception to this rule. Second, […] the Catholic church in Africa was not a state church, securely established by imperial fiat at the top of African society. […] The newly-discovered Divjak letters, in particular, tell a dismal story. Bishops frequently found themselves unable to protect those who had fled to sanctuary in their churches. There was a constant shortage of clergymen. Heavy taxation had impoverished the urban classes from whom the clergy was most often recruited, and the imperial government systematically restricted the tax benefits of those who served the church. Rather than being a church of the upper classes, the social composition of the Catholic church was little different from that of its Donatist rival” ibid., 6–7).

[3] In paragraphs three and four, Augustine informs Bishop Alipius that he had come across a law decreed previously by emperor Honorius to suppress these activities and to punish the perpetrators (see, Augustine, “Divjak Letter 10*,” 77–8). Chadwick conjectures that Augustine perhaps learned of this decree through his friend Eustochius. The latter is the addressee of Divjak letter 24*, whose content focuses primarily upon complex legal and practical questions Augustine had to address with respect to children sold into slavery (“New Letters of St. Augustine,” 433).

[4] Commenting on this remarkable event, Lepelley notes that the gangs employed by the Galatian slave traders often had as their target peasants—in this case, impoverished Numidian peasants. Appealing strategically to Roman law and employing Roman honor and freedom rhetoric (see paragraphs 5 and 6 of “Divjak Letter 10*,” in St. Augustine Letters, Vol. VI, edited by Eno, 78–9), Augustine intercedes on their behalf. As Lepelley observes, “[t]hese peasants, Augustine said, were still Roman citizens and had the right to be protected by the imperial authorities. Unfortunately for them, in 428, when this letter was written, the Western Roman Empire was collapsing” (“Facing Wealth and Poverty,” 7).

Does St. Augustine’s theology make him a socio-political passivist? Many assume it does. However, the fairly recent discovery of almost thirty previously unknown letters of St. Augustine by Johannes Divjak in the early nineteen eighties shows that picture to be false. Moreover, what emerges is a saint, no doubt influenced by his socio-cultural milieu—but then again, if we accept social conditioning, who isn’t influenced in such a way?—nonetheless, Augustine’s relationship to slavery and citizens’ rights manifests itself as a complex, multifaceted, conflicting and even at times contradicting position, yet in no way is it a position of passive resignation to the social evils of this world.[1]

Although scholars disagree over the precise dates of some of the letters, most believe that they were written during the last fifteen years of Augustine’s life (415-430 A.D.).[2] In particular, epistle 10*, written as early as 422 or 423 or, as Claude Lepelley estimates, as late as 428 A.D., sheds light on Augustine and his parishioners’ active involvement in thwarting the lucrative “business” of slave dealers (mangones) in Hippo.[3]

Before discussing passages from epistle 10*, I want to be clear as to the specifics of my claims. Although the contents of the letter reveal that Augustine condemned the kidnapping, violent treatment, and enslavement of free persons in North Africa—most of whom were peasants, women, and children—he does not explicitly speak out against the institution of slavery per se. Nor do Augustine’s rescue operations, as recounted in this letter, seem to include those who are born slaves or those non-Roman citizens enslaved as a result of Roman war victories or other violent means.[4] In other words, Augustine, consonant with the social mores of late antiquity, accepted the institution and its legal distinctions of slave and free citizen.[5] Slaves were, as Peter Brown explains, “seen as objects of compassion by Christians”; however, “[t]he destiny of slaves was held to rest in the hands of their masters and mistresses. It was for the owners of the slaves, and for no one else, to ensure that slaves were fed, clothed, and protected.”[6]

Brown further adds that Christian morality taught that masters ought not treat their slaves with cruelty, nor should they exploit them sexually (both of which were common practices).[7] Likewise, Christian masters were encouraged, if not expected, to manumit their slaves.[8] In sum, qua institution, Augustine and the Christians of his day by and large did not directly challenge slavery, and in that respect were very much products of their social environment. In fact, it was not until the latter half of the eighteenth century that slavery as an institution “came to be regarded as a moral evil of a peculiar kind.”[9] For Augustine, slavery is an unnatural, prelapsarian institution, which God permits as a form of either “reformatory” or “retributive” punishment for sin.[10] Sometimes cultural blindness has a particularly enduring staying power.

Conceding all of the above, nonetheless, what we find in Divjak letter 10* is an Augustine who actively works to subvert the trafficking and enslavement of some of the most vulnerable, albeit free Roman citizens in Hippo. That is, even though our modern and postmodern sensibilities find highly problematic Augustine’s failure to condemn the institution of slavery, nonetheless, his theological commitments—imperfectly inflected and at times refracted through distorted cultural biases rather than theological truth—compelled him to intercede in word and deed on behalf of the poor and powerless.[11] As we shall see, he and his parishioners were willing to risk their lives in order to subvert the violent, self-serving practices of slave-traders in North Africa.[12]

Notes

[1] Divjak had been engaged in a project to catalogue all Augustinian texts in France—a significant undertaking, given Augustine’s output! While working in a library in Marseille, he discovered a fifteenth century manuscript of both known and previously unknown letters. As a result, in one unexpected and fruitful finding, almost thirty new letters were added to the Augustinian corpus. The Divjak letters were originally published in 1981 in volume 88 of the Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum (CSEL). (Eno, “Introduction,” in St. Augustine Letters, Vol. VI, 4). For a detailed discussion of the Divjak letters, see Chadwick, “New Letters of St. Augustine.”

[3] Ibid., 75. See also, Lepelley, “Facing Wealth and Poverty,” esp. 28. Lepelley also discusses the social landscape of Hippo and its rather large population of beggars; see, ibid., esp., 4–5.

[4] Garnsey enumerates three defining features of slavery: “the slave was kinless, stripped of his or her old social identity in the process of capture, sale and deracination, and denied the capacity to forge new bonds of kinship through marriage alliance” (Ideas of Slavery from Aristotle to Augustine, 1). See also, Patterson, Slavery and Social Death. Patterson gives the following as a preliminary definition of slavery with respect to personal relations and then devotes his first chapter to an elaboration of that definition: “slavery is the permanent, violent domination of natally alienated and generally dishonored persons” (ibid., 13, italics in original).

[5] As Weidemann explains, several factors, including new restrictions on “the exploitation of peasant labor,” as well as terminating the practice of debt enslavement, contributed to the formation of more rigid social divide. “The consequent clear and sharp distinction between the rights of citizens, no matter how lowly, and the rightlessness of chattel-slaves was codified and reinforced by the developments of Roman law” (Slavery, 6). Thus, previously understood intermediate statues were increasingly obliterated, making it all the more urgent to stay on the free side of the divide. As Garnsey explains, although both Athens and Rome were chattel slave societies, one must avoid the temptation to flatten out their differences. On these differences, see Garnsey, Ideas of Slavery from Aristotle to Augustine, esp. 2–9.

[7] For a detailed and informative study of the violence enacted upon slaves in the ancient period, see Glancy, Slavery in Early Christianity. Glancy’s analyses emphasize the “corporeality of ancient slavery,” showing the various ways in which “the bodies of slaves were not themselves neatly bounded nor defined entities. The bodies of slaves were vulnerable to abuse and penetration” (ibid., 3, 12). On the commonly held view that male slaveowners had a “right” to engage in sexual relations wit their female slaves, see Corcoran, Saint Augustine on Slavery, esp. 29–30.

[8] Ibid., 61, 62. Brown further adds that some of the freed slaves were, after careful scrutiny and sufficient time, “received into monasteries or as members of the clergy” (ibid., 62). On the actual frequency of manumission in Rome generally speaking, see Wiedemann, “The Regularity of Roman Manumission.” Wiedemann concludes that though the ideal was that a faithful, loyal slave ought to be freed after a relatively short term of service—perhaps six years with ten years considered rather long—this was not the case in actual practice; rather, “the real world was ruled by self-interest” (ibid., 175). Given Wiedemann’s conclusion, it would be informative to compare, if such is possible, the manumission rates among Christians and non-Christians.

[10] For this reason, as well as what he believes to be the authoritative teaching of St. Paul (for example, 1 Cor. 7:21–24), one can find many instances in Augustine’s writings where he exhorts slaves unable to obtain their freedom to remain in their condition and to serve their masters “loyally and with a good will” (City of God, 19.15; 944). One should, however, keep in mind that the New Testament itself presents contrasting and conflicting views on slavery. For example, several scholars interpret St. Paul as exhorting Philemon to manumit Onesimus, Philemon’s slave (and perhaps a fugitive slave), who had converted to Christianity. I describe the latter as a “contrasting case of sorts,” because, depending upon how one interprets these passages, one could argue that the New Testament itself is ambiguous and that those early Christian communities were still very much working out how to deal with the issue of slavery in light of the Christ-event and its individual and socio-political ramifications.

[11] See also, Lepelley, “Facing Wealth and Poverty.” Drawing upon the contents of Divjak letter 20*, Lepelley highlights Augustine’s institution in Hippo of a “matricula pauperum, i.e., a list of poor persons supported by the church,” most of whom were “widows and orphans” (ibid., 5).

[12] Against the charge by modern historians that Augustine cared little for the poor, enslaved, and powerless of society and that he was a promoter of colonialism and imperialism, Lepelley argues convincingly based on Augustine’s sermons, letters, and other primary sources that such theories are prime examples of anachronistic readings that have failed to wrestle with Augustine’s texts and the framework of his historical context. See Lepelley, “Facing Wealth and Poverty,” esp. 5–10. See also, Brown, Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire.

Like Augustine, Foucault too manifests concern for the marginalized of society, devoting himself to the study of prisons and mental institutions and to the ways in which these structures and their associated discourses, disciplines, and practices produce new, characteristically modern subjectivities. As Schuld explains, rather than uncovering how “rhetoric of imperial glory” masks the reality of violence and self-interest (which was part of Augustine’s project in the City of God), Foucault analyzes how modern institutions and practices “garner and preserve power most effectively by relying upon a scientific sounding rhetoric of progress.”[1] With the transition from a sovereign-based political model wherein power is centralized and associated with the person of the king to a modern context wherein power is dispersed and diffused in a netlike fashion, a more “neutral,” “objective” discourse comes into play. That is, in contrast with, for example, Roman glory narratives and their overt conspicuous appeals to the political realm, modern scientific narratives present themselves as apolitical and unbiased.[2] By “posing as a coldly antiseptic science,” modern narratives of progress hide their normative and moral judgments;[3] the more successfully the new rhetoric hides its “political leverage,” the more politically efficacious its possibilities and widespread its socially produced realities.[4]

In his book, Discipline and Punish, Foucault discusses at great length how modern scientific discourses (and their attendant practices) are employed to further the rhetoric of progress and to mask new forms of violence inherent in modern socio-political institutions such as the modern judicial and prison systems. According to Foucault’s account, although by beginning of the nineteenth century the great theatrical displays of physical punishment—the tortured body—had disappeared,[5] “a trace of ‘torture’” can still be found “in the modern mechanisms of criminal justice—a trace that has not been entirely overcome, but which is enveloped, increasingly, by the non-corporeal nature of the penal system.”[6] Now that the body is no longer drawn and quartered, on what, if not the body, is punishment carried out? “The expiation that once rained down upon the body must be replaced by a punishment that acts in depth on the heart, the thoughts, the will, the inclinations.”[7]

Foucault is not claiming that modern punishment in no way involves the body; rather, his analyses help us to see that the “objects” of punishment have changed and the extent of its reach has been broadened considerably. Crimes are certainly still juridical objects of concern, even if certain former offenses are no longer categorized as crimes (for example, blasphemy). However, from another perspective, our understanding of the nature of crime as an object of concern for penal practice has been transformed radically. That is, we still pass sentences on certain acts defined as illegal and criminal; however, “judgment is also passed on the passions, instincts, anomalies, infirmities, maladjustments, effects of environment or heredity; acts of aggression are punished, so also, through them, is aggressivity; rape, but at the same time perversions; murders, but also drives and desires.”[8] As a result, judges are no longer competent to pass judgment on their own; they must instead call upon a host of “subsidiary judges” to aid them. This “scientifico-juridical complex,” including psychiatrists, medical doctors of various sorts, prison specialists, and educationalists, not only helps the judge decide what kind of punishment shall be enacted but whether the act is punishable at all. In other words, if the person who committed the act is judged mad, then all talk of crime disappears and medical treatment rather than punishment is required.

This modern scientifico-judicial apparatus does much more than simply mete out sentences; it discerns what kind of “soul” a person has, speculates on how one’s past influences one’s present, and then predicts what future actions one is likely to commit. Through the complex interplay of scientific, medical, psychiatric, and legal discourses and their accompanying practices, new subjectivities are produced such as the delinquent and the pervert. Moreover, the production of new subjectivities goes hand in hand with the emergence of new scientific discourses, and the two serve to mutually reinforce one another. Not only is a greater role in the sentencing process given to psychiatric experts, but criminologists likewise come on the scene, defining new subjectivities and new “scientific” objects of study. According to Foucault, those trained in psychiatry, criminal anthropology, and related fields engage in this subject- and object-making activity as follows:

by inscribing offenses in the field of objects susceptible of scientific knowledge, they provide the mechanisms of legal punishment with a justifiable hold not only on offenses, but on individuals; not only on what they do, but also on what they are, will be, may be. The additional factor of the offender’s soul, which the legal system has laid hold of, is only apparently explanatory and limitative, and is in fact expansionist.[9]

In other words, punishment does not cease with the completion of one’s prison term; rather, one’s new identity remains fixed long after the term has been served via strict monitoring, mandatory medical or psychiatric treatment, counseling, as well as restrictions on living, educational, and employment possibilities. Now that criminals are objects of science and legal punishments are intertwined with “judgments of normality, attributions of causality, assessments of possible changes, [and] anticipations as to the offender’s future,” punishment expands into long-term treatment with the hope of curing the criminal. A new truth game has been born; although bloodless, its rules, discourses, and practices create living subjects as objects. In addition to these embodied subjects, another “body” is formed—“[a] corpus of knowledge, techniques, ‘scientific’ discourses,” which together “becomes entangled with the practice of the power to punish.”[10] Having broadened its cabinet to including medical experts and specialists of various sorts, the judicial system presents itself as apolitical, dispassionate, and relying upon objective science to render its determinations. Thus, like Augustine, Foucault issues a warning, calling us to be alert to the ways in which the rhetoric of scientific progress is at work in our society where we might least expect it. Although it is highly unlikely that any of us would want to return to medieval torture as a means of punishment for crime, Foucault’s analyses of the genealogy of the modern prison system help us to see that our “contemporary mechanisms of power,” although less spectacular, “are no less coercive. In attempting to rehabilitate the whole individual, the modern judicial system uses its own methods of violence and force, only it administers them in such a way that they no longer appear violent or forceful.”[11]

Notes

[1] Schuld, “Augustine, Foucault, and the Politics of Imperfection,” 17.

[2] This is not to deny the reality of modern glory narratives such as the United States’ inflated talk of spreading democracy worldwide. Foucault would, presumably, recognize modern glory narratives as one of many discursive tactics employed to further the rhetoric of progress.

Thanks for your comment, Brendan. I'll have to check out that section of your book! Gadamer does engage substantively both Thomas and Augustine in _Truth and Method_, although very little has been published on that topic, excepting John Arthos's book, _The Inner Word in Gadamer's Hermeneutics_.

Excellent again! It's interesting how Gadamer's theory of the image in many ways corresponds to certain scholastic theologies of the image, in particular Thomas's (which I discuss in my book). Thanks again for bringing all this to light!

Thanks Cynthia! So much substance in play that has yet to be explored, and it is such an important part of our everyday experience. There also seems to be a close kinship between "hermeneutic identity" and a metaxological identity. Thanks for this reflection!